NewsRoyals' bats remain silent in St. Louis
Scoreless innings streak reaches 24 against Cards
By Dick Kaegel / MLB.com
05/23/09 5:59 PM ET
ST. LOUIS -- Another I-70 Series game at Busch Stadium. Another sellout crowd of 43,829 on Saturday. Another shutout thrown by the Cardinals. Another 5-0 loss for the Royals.Ah, the ecstasy of repetition for St. Louis. Ouch, the agony of déjà vu for Kansas City.
"We're not panicking," third baseman Mark Teahen said, "but we've got to find a way to score runs. It's not that tough to figure that out."
Yet the Royals have been puzzled for 24 consecutive scoreless innings now, dating back to a third-inning run scored on Thursday against Cleveland. They've lost four straight games and 11 of their last 14.
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All of which has dropped the Royals to 21-22, under the .500 mark for the first time since April 11 when they were 2-3.
Not even a players-only meeting, convened early Saturday morning before the high noon game, could inspire a victory in this Interleague match -- or even a Royals run, for that matter.
Center fielder Coco Crisp, who wouldn't comment on the meeting, nevertheless believed the Royals played with more fire in this shutout.
"I think we played one through nine today with intensity," Crisp said. "We just couldn't get anything offensively rolling. But the mentality today, I think, was good. It was a winning mentality, but we just couldn't get it done today."
Crisp felt the team's attitude was improved over Friday night's effort.
"[It was] much better," Crisp said. "We were real dismal last night."
Kyle Lohse pitched eight innings of this shutout for the Cardinals as the Royals once again managed only five hits. He didn't finish the game because he was hit on his pitching arm by a pitch in the eighth inning.
With two on and one out, Lohse was squaring around to bunt when he was struck in the right forearm by Ron Mahay's pitch.
"It was just a fastball in," Mahay said. "I wasn't trying to hit him."
Lohse initially bristled when struck, but cooled off and ran the bases. But the welt on his arm prompted Cardinals manager Tony La Russa to finish the game with reliever Chris Perez. Same result: a scoreless inning.
The Cardinals' rotation is on an astounding roll. Their starters have given up only one run in the last 37 2/3 innings dating to last Monday. No surprise they've won the last five games.
Miguel Olivo belted two doubles off Lohse, but was stranded at second base both times. The Royals had a two-out chance in the sixth when Billy Butler singled and Jose Guillen was hit by a pitch, but Teahen's hard grounder up the middle was stopped by shortstop Tyler Greene and the inning was over.
"Apparently, they were holding Billy on at second. I don't know," Teahen said. "He's a threat. But, yeah, usually there's not a guy standing there. That's kind of the way it's rolling right now. Balls that are hit hard are at people, and we're not hitting 'em hard consistently enough."
The Cardinals struck for two runs after Royals starter Luke Hochevar retired the first two batters he faced. Hochevar walked Albert Pujols and Chris Duncan, and Nick Stavinoha slashed a double just inside third base to score both runners.
"I even shifted over on that," Teahen said. "It had chalk all over the ball. I was already shifted over there, so he couldn't have snuck it through much closer than he did."
Skip Schumaker upped the lead to 3-0 when he led off the Cardinals' third with a home run into the right-field bullpen. It was his third this season.
"The first inning was unacceptable," Hochever said, "but after that, I felt I pitched well."
But the Royals just weren't hitting well again. Not that they've exactly been awestruck by Todd Wellemeyer or Lohse the last two games.
"I haven't heard one guy in the dugout say, 'Wow, this guy's just too nasty for us to get to,'" manager Trey Hillman said. "So I guess that's a positive with the negative of not scoring any runs the last two days. Because they're not making excuses -- they expect themselves to make the adjustments."
Adjustments, or something, are certainly in order.
"We had a little more intensity today, but no matter how intense you are, you've got to score runs and we didn't pull that off today," Teahen said.
Dick Kaegel is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
